Well, duh. Sexy sports cars give a brand a certain caché, but those low cost and high volume econoboxes are what keep the lights on. The Focus being a solid economy car is probably why Ford survived a little better than GM or Chrysler, who both had terrible small cars until recently.

I almost bought a 2013 Focus, but there have been so many complaints about the transmission that I decided against it. To this day, there are still ongoing problems that have a lot of owners pissed off.

freak7:I almost bought a 2013 Focus, but there have been so many complaints about the transmission that I decided against it. To this day, there are still ongoing problems that have a lot of owners pissed off.

I owned a 2009 Ford Focus 2 door coupe for 4 years, until earlier this year when I swapped it for a mustang.

Other than oil and routine maintence, I never had to do anything else to it.

I've rented them multiple times. Nice, tight car. I was driving a rental one a couple months ago and pulled into the parking lot and a nice young man driving a Dodge Charger whipped around a row of cars and plowed into me. Trashed the front end, hood, and popped the radiator. But I had full coverage so it didn't cost me a dime....

If your label of 'best' goes to 'the car that meets the needs of most of the people who drive cars today' then yes, the focus is a pretty natural fit - IF you drive an SUV and don't go offroad ALL THE TIME, or tow things ALL THE TIME, or carry heavy loads ALL THE TIME, then yes, for the parts of your day where you don't need an SUV, a ford focus is a perfect fit for you.

If you have a Bentley, or a ferrari or any other kind of 'high performance' machine, then unless 100% of the time you are driving at 100mph+ at the nurburgring or on a speedtrack, then it's really very likely that driving a ford focus would suit you quite well during most of your life.

And if you add in reliability, durability, and fuel economy mixed with low costs achieved by high volume production and common component sets, (which then creates an inexpensive parts aftermarket) .. then it even wins more on price over cars like the prius which might genuinely give you better gas milage.

So yes, For most people most of the time, doing most of what they do (which is getting from a to b) a small affordable, reliable common car will almost always win 'best' car.

rubi_con_man:If your label of 'best' goes to 'the car that meets the needs of most of the people who drive cars today' then yes, the focus is a pretty natural fit - IF you drive an SUV and don't go offroad ALL THE TIME, or tow things ALL THE TIME, or carry heavy loads ALL THE TIME, then yes, for the parts of your day where you don't need an SUV, a ford focus is a perfect fit for you.

If you have a Bentley, or a ferrari or any other kind of 'high performance' machine, then unless 100% of the time you are driving at 100mph+ at the nurburgring or on a speedtrack, then it's really very likely that driving a ford focus would suit you quite well during most of your life.

And if you add in reliability, durability, and fuel economy mixed with low costs achieved by high volume production and common component sets, (which then creates an inexpensive parts aftermarket) .. then it even wins more on price over cars like the prius which might genuinely give you better gas milage.

So yes, For most people most of the time, doing most of what they do (which is getting from a to b) a small affordable, reliable common car will almost always win 'best' car.

I wanted all of this and sporty, too. Went with a 2006 mx5 four years ago. It was a good choice.

freak7:I almost bought a 2013 Focus, but there have been so many complaints about the transmission that I decided against it. To this day, there are still ongoing problems that have a lot of owners pissed off.

I loved my '07 focus wagon. more actual interior space for cargo than many SUVs, good mileage.

freak7:I almost bought a 2013 Focus, but there have been so many complaints about the transmission that I decided against it. To this day, there are still ongoing problems that have a lot of owners pissed off.

Ford has always had problems with automatic transformers. If you buy a ford get a manual.

This is from a UK newspaper. The Euro Focus is much different than the US version. Actually, Euro Fords are much better overall than their Murican counterparts. Ford knows their US customers are idiots. "Neither cast ye your pearls before swine."

Nothing with the Chevy 3.1 LG8 motor is worth a crap. They break head bolts anywhere between 140K to 200K miles whereas the early 90's 3.1 LH0 motor is a dependable motor. I still see several early 90's Luminas and the vans that shared that motor still running. The cars with the 3.1 LG8 V6 and 3.4 LQ1 V6 are starting to fade away from the streets. That is saying a lot in a town that has 80-90% Chevy vehicles on the road.

/ I am friends with an engineer who worked on the LG8 and LQ1 motors for GM and he is the one who informed me that it was something they knew about before production.//He drives Chevy but none of his cars has those two motors

Had an '00 Focus I put 235,000 miles on until the second baby came along and it was minivan time. Solid car, but I liked the Escorts better and since Ford minivans are teh suck, I made the jump to the Toyota Sienna. Which is a perfectly good minivan except for one huge issue - the unspeakable evil of run-flat tires.

If some car dealer tries to hard-sell that run-flat shiat at you as a feature, tell him to get a Craftmatic adjustable bed and go blow himself. Run-flats have been nothing but hell for me: they're expensive, noisy, no great shakes in bad weather, and they wear out in 25,000 miles which is a year's driving for me so every fall I have to lay out a thousand for new tires because the Sienna has no place to put a spare. At least the Sienna has been insanely durable outside of the useless farking tires.

I have a 2001 SE with 90k. It runs great, even after I played a little bit of bumper cars in new Jersey. However, the power windows have a part that gets brittle with age, and that baby costs like $400 to replace. Now I have 2 windows I've replaced, and 2 I don't open anymore. And the AC doesn't work anymore, but that might be related to the bumper cars.

Gulper Eel:Had an '00 Focus I put 235,000 miles on until the second baby came along and it was minivan time. Solid car, but I liked the Escorts better and since Ford minivans are teh suck, I made the jump to the Toyota Sienna. Which is a perfectly good minivan except for one huge issue - the unspeakable evil of run-flat tires.

If some car dealer tries to hard-sell that run-flat shiat at you as a feature, tell him to get a Craftmatic adjustable bed and go blow himself. Run-flats have been nothing but hell for me: they're expensive, noisy, no great shakes in bad weather, and they wear out in 25,000 miles which is a year's driving for me so every fall I have to lay out a thousand for new tires because the Sienna has no place to put a spare. At least the Sienna has been insanely durable outside of the useless farking tires.

Nothing with the Chevy 3.1 LG8 motor is worth a crap. They break head bolts anywhere between 140K to 200K miles whereas the early 90's 3.1 LH0 motor is a dependable motor. I still see several early 90's Luminas and the vans that shared that motor still running. The cars with the 3.1 LG8 V6 and 3.4 LQ1 V6 are starting to fade away from the streets. That is saying a lot in a town that has 80-90% Chevy vehicles on the road.

/ I am friends with an engineer who worked on the LG8 and LQ1 motors for GM and he is the one who informed me that it was something they knew about before production.//He drives Chevy but none of his cars has those two motors

I bought mine new, just turned over 215,000 miles. Whoever was working on the assembly line in Oshawa when it was being built has my utmost respect.

After having one as a rental for the past week I'm going to go with no. Of course it had great gas mileage, but that's about the only thing I found good about it. Not that it was the worst car or anything, but nothing special. I'm assuming this is based on practically and price and not about it being a nice car.

2012 Focus here with 31k miles so far and no problems. Got the Titanium version and it is far from crap inside, but the price reflected that. I was just happy to finally get an American smaller car that didn't have a cheap interior. Wish it was diesel and had a manual transmission but other than that my wife loves it. I'm happy with my Golf TDI daily driver and Silverado for towing and hauling.

Only hiccup was a faulty fuel injector at 28k miles. Dealer paid for part...when they wanted to keep the car for 2 days to replace it, i asked them for it. Went to the parking lot and popped in the new one in 10min flat.

Running like a clock since.

Biggest issue: factory tinted windows. The rear and two small side rear windows have large bubbles in the tint film.

Unless they've completely redesigned them from the ground up since then, or have a huge quality range in their model lines, I have just one thing to say.

[i1.kym-cdn.com image 468x349]

Second worst car I ever rented (the worst was some sort of Kia midsized SUV thing that had humungous blind spots).

They actually have. I got a bunch of Focus rentals a few years years ago that were absolute pieces of junk. But I've gotten a couple recently and they're really much better. The difference between the Focus and the Fusion is huge, though.